July 22nd, Helen Neal sent out a notice of the first 2016-2017 school year Jefferson County Colorado School Board (Jeffco BOE) special meeting – study/dialogue session. Helen is Chief of Staff Superintendent/Board of Education. Near the end of this blog is a link with more information and information about the meeting. There you will find information telling you how to get on the notification email list concerning all school board meetings (three or more a month).
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Because of what public schools have become, I am sad

to see the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year in Jefferson County, Colorado. I have witnessed this mess progressively developing since I became aware of the problems in the 1960s.

Some of you may not be aware that schools are not what the taxpayer thinks they are paying for.

Some things that sadden me:

Parents, once again, will be told how great their children are doing (or how miserable they are doing, and that they need to be put on drugs, and fixed by the system). Parents will be told how wonderful the schools are, and how excellent their school district is, compared to other school districts (but not told that all school districts keep declining every year).

Most students will be stressed because of all the pressure to “perform” — caused by the lack of tools they have been given to succeed in school (like reading!). A huge percentage of students are put on mind-control drugs to make them more docile/compliant. Most kids don’t want to hurt their teachers and their school, so their own failures to perform will put more pressure on them — they will miss the chance to experience excitement in learning and the adventure of exploring and discovering — they will not enjoy school — they will be dumbed down.

Teachers will be overburdened and discouraged by the controls and requirements that will be forced on them. They will use their teaching skills less this year, and they will increasingly be relegated to being “room monitors” while “experts” and computers will individually “school each student.” They will continue gathering every bit of information they possibly can, on each of their students, and coordinating with every person who has contact with each student. All the information on a child will continue to be gathered and placed on a dashboard, to make it easier for each child to be analyzed by more people.

The public will be told that the schools must have more money, in order to better teach students. It is not true. Increased amounts of money keep being poured into the schools — and the results are: more social experiments and social engineering — less education — less morality — and more poorly-educated people.

Selected schools, principals, coaches, counselors, teachers and students will be given accolades (awards, honors, praise) at every monthly general school board meeting. All will appear to be friendly and happy and successful.

“Failures” in schools will continue to be blamed on the lack of enough money, or on facilities that do not have the latest in design and technology. Or the “failures” will be blamed on faulty “assessments,” or on the failures of teachers in lower grades. Nobody will “take the bull by the horns” and teach the children to read and think. Almost nobody will be taught cursive (“because cursive is not on the federal or state education standards” – “there is no time to teach cursive” – and the conventional wisdom is that “cursive is of no value anyway — we have computers to type on now”).

People will mindlessly swallow excuses and explanations without any thought.

Parents will be excluded from what is going on in the classrooms, and their pleas for their children will be ignored. Actually, teachers will be kept in the dark as well — they will not be allowed to see how their students are doing on the assessments (with a threat of punishment if they peek at student computer screens during some assessments — this is very unsettling).

Parents will have to financially make up for the failures of Jeffco (Jefferson County) school boards to pay for school expenses through the school district budget. To make up for this failure on the part of the school boards, certain parents will continue to be forced to pay exorbitant fees for sports, fields, transportation, supplies, and whatever else the school board decides to charge them for. Families that are able to pay their way, will over-pay to cover for the increasing number of people who do not pay these fees. The boards continue to pass the cost of their irresponsible spending onto families. This looks like a type of social engineering — of “redistribution of wealth” — taking from those that have and giving it to those that don’t have, so everyone can be equally poor.

People inside the system will continue to be given preferences for school district contracts and new jobs. The idea of a “competitive bid” will often continue to be confined to a select few insiders – or maybe just one. Some people within the system will be moved to different, higher-paying jobs to give the impression that they have not gotten increases in their salaries (because of limits on percentages of raises, and wanting to appear to be frugal).

People will be fired or punished for failure to comply with current education demands, or for taking extra time to try to teach their students. (A friend of mine retired early because of these bad restrictions that Common Core put on her teaching, and the way Common Core eliminated her ability to take time to help students the way she always had.)

More teachers will give up, and change jobs. The overly generous retirement teachers get (PERA), will not be enough of a carrot for some teachers to stay. (Many of the greatest teachers will quit.) Good teachers actually want to be free to teach their students.

Teachers will continue to be pressured to stop teaching content, and instead will continue to be “forced” to focus on preparing their students to do well on the assessments — because teacher salaries and their employment are connected to the “performance” of their students. Supposedly this merit pay and financial punishment for students falling short of what is demanded, were meant to insure “accountability” and higher academic accomplishments. Instead it has hamstrung teachers, administrators and students — and has guaranteed poorer education results.

Principals will continue to feel the pressure to do whatever is possible to get the assessment scores up — especially in reading which is slipping abysmally. They have to place pressure on the teachers. The curriculum that is being offered to most of them simply increases sight words — but it does not teach phonics — in other words, it does not teach students to read. How sad is this?!

Schools must sacrifice education to raise their “assessment” scores — or else lose funding, or even have their doors closed.

“Invisible” money will continue to be poured down the mouth of the Data-gathering Monster — a monster that has an endless, growing appetite. This monster was with us before Common Core, but is now, with the help of Common Core, gobbling up more and more time and resources in the schools. This “invisible” expense will continue to be hidden, so that you can’t find it in the budget. A great amount of it is hidden in “technology” items, and in the mandatory expenses “we” have agreed to continue to pay Bill Gates (for his services). Data-gathering, and paying Bill are part of the “agreement” that came along with Common Core. The “assessment” information (added to all other personally identifiable information gathered on each student) is also part of the Common Core agreement. Needless to say, you cannot see the endless, out-of-control increase in expenses for data-gathering — it is “invisible” by design.

PERA is also responsible for the exploding demand for money in our school district. Unions will continue to pressure for more money — in a retirement system that won’t exist for long, but that gives the unions more power for now. PERA is retirement money for school district employees. See two previous blogs 0116 and 0119, to read more about the bad financial state of PERA. Note that PERA’s bad financial condition is intentionally not reported by the people who report the financial status of PERA.

See why I’m sad about school starting up?

BOND AND MIL LEVY OVERRIDE ITEMS
WILL BE ON THE NOVEMBER 2016 BALLOT IN COLORADO

Steve Bell (Chief Operations Officer) and others in the Administration will continue their never-ending, always-sounds-the same, year-after-year plea for more facilities, more money, more reasons to take children out of their neighborhood schools, in order to warehouse them with older children, splitting them away from friends and family, and away from their neighborhoods. Why do Steve Bell and others say this must be done? They say it is to lower our cost of education (for efficiency) – and because the school facilities are unsafe/inadequate/in poor condition. It isn’t considered “fair” that some smaller schools succeed. We can’t allow smaller high-performing, or just happy schools to continue to exist. We must make them all big! They say “schools must be big to save money!” “It’s not “fair” that smaller schools spend more money per pupil than bigger schools.”

Thus the “necessity” for the November requests for increases in the Bond and Mil Levy Override. Citizens will be urged to agree to increases in taxes.

NOTE: it is the policy of school districts, controlled by unions, to ALWAYS make the case for MORE money. They can always find ways to spend it!

The recent previous school board majority was transparent
and careful with our money
(They were republicans not supported by the unions.
Current board members are all union-supported.)

Note: the recent previous recalled school board majority, had put aside the money to pay for a new school entirely with cash. When the current board won the recall, they immediately decided to spend that money elsewhere. The new board will continue the tradition of spending down money, and going to the taxpayers to pay for new schools (instead of paying zero dollars for the new school).

See Blog 0033 for more information about the accomplishments of the previous, reform board. John Newkirk was one of the three reform board members (republicans not controlled by the unions). He wrote an impressive list of accomplishments for the school board he was on, with links that have very detailed information. It is a document well worth studying, and saving.

The previous board majority put action behind their promises.

WILL MORE MONEY IMPROVE THE EDUCATION OF STUDENTS?

These outlays of money do not have anything to do with equipping students to be able to read, write (cursive), think, compose coherent documents, communicate verbally, compute, research, reason, etc. No matter how much money we pour into the schools — the students may believe that they are smarter, but they will learn less. Those controlling the purse-strings appear to have another agenda than education. See Blogs 0110, 0111, and 0114 to learn about this agenda. It is explained in the documentaries Agenda and Agenda 2.

More money will actually fund more spying and being spied on. Endless data will continue to be gathered on everyone (students and their families and friends and neighbors, teachers, counselors, coaches, principals, all administrators — everyone connected directly or indirectly with the school district). Everyone will be told to inform on each other, with the fear of punishment or legal action if they don’t inform on each other. (Sounds to me like Germany under Hitler, or under any other communist/socialist dictator of a country.)

All the data will continue: to be personally connected to each individual person; uploaded nationally and internationally; made available to people in the school district, future employers, organizations “doing research,” and countless other individuals and entities — but none of it will be made available to the students or to their parents or relatives.

FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD — GREAT VIDEO (AND TRANSCRIPT) ABOUT COMMON CORE
AND ASSOCIATED DATA-GATHERING